


Breathe Me

by BlakeBroflovski



Series: Sentiment [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, OCD triggers, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Proceed with caution, part of a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeBroflovski/pseuds/BlakeBroflovski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion piece intended to fit between chapters 7 and 8 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/983204">It's Funny Because Eren Can't Read</a>.</p><p>Levi has a few more problems on his mind than just a splash of tea on his cravat. Warning for potentially triggering content to those with OCD / anxiety disorders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe Me

**Author's Note:**

> "I think that I might break. I've lost myself again, and I feel unsafe." [[x](www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghPcYqn0p4Y)]
> 
> Since this is a one-shot, it is considered complete, though the story arc is ongoing and expands beyond it. Be sure to bookmark the [entire series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/57837) if you'd like to be kept up to speed with updates for the entire arc.

Your door crashes shut behind you with the force of your swing, and you can't be assed to make sure you haven't broken it.

You stride toward the desk without any idea what you're going to do when you get there, but the grime beneath your fingernails is too vexatious and you _swear_ you can feel the contamination clinging to your palms from every doorknob you've passed on your way, and the compounding distress changes your course for the bathroom.

It's never bright enough in here, no matter how many additional sconces you mount and fill, and the gloom tricks you into feeling the room is more claustrophobically disgusting than you know it to be.  You spend far too long washing your hands, even for your standards, nearly pulling your fingernails off in your endeavor to scrape out every molecule down to the quick.

You attempt to blot your hands on the towel, but it leaves lint on your knuckles.  You might try to wipe them on your jacket, but it's filthy, you _know_ it is, you think you might even be able to _see_ it, and you shuck it off, dirtying your hands beyond the potential for doubt that you need to wash again.

You debate leaving the bathroom to fold your jacket over the arm of your chair as usual, but you stand there staring at it.

Fuck, you aren't _this_ bad.

You've been getting progressively worse since you arrived at HQ, but you've hit your apex tonight, and the acute sensitivity is causing you to be set off by things you normally have the power to ignore or perhaps wouldn't even notice.  In turn, the abundance of activated neuroses is aggravating your sensitivity further, and you've gotten caught in a self-perpetuating cycle you haven't encountered since you'd stagnated after joining the Corps.

That was different, though.  Given the sudden unfettered access to sterilization and proper self-maintenance, in tandem with the abrupt shift to tight regulation, strict scheduling, and every minutest of order signed in triplicate, the constant struggle against bedlam had been replaced by a simple agenda and clean lifestyle that had left you floundering with the lack of anything to combat.  You'd gotten so used to every living moment being a battle that you'd gotten lost in the absence of knowing what to do with yourself.

This time, there's a definite trigger, and in your frustration with it, you've begun hyper-focusing on issues that would normally be innocuous.  You're sure it's supposed to be an unconscious coping mechanism of some kind, designed to remove your mind from the true root of your worries, but instead it winds you up tighter and has you in such a deep anxiety it's almost panic.

Clenching your teeth, you ball up the jacket in your fists and hurl it from the bathroom.  It smacks into a bedpost and flutters to the floor.

You scrub your hands with a rigorous ferocity and don't bother drying them; anything you touch would dirty them again.

The harness straps across your chest, usually unoffending, are constricting your breathing to a point that breaches the unbearable.  You pull them off without being sure to loosen them enough, and you're sure you damage a few in the process, but you can't find a single fuck to give.  The straps hang loose at your sides, and the jingling they produce as you stride to your desk irritates you so badly you tug the apron off halfway there.  The clang of unrestrained harness buckles hitting the floor when you toss the apron across the room satisfies you, but echoes off the inside of your skull until it scratches at your brain.

You really should go back.

You ought to return to the mess hall and help clean the spilled tea and apologize for your outburst.  You're sure they're all upset by your melodrama, and you know it's inexcusable, that you need to present a far better example than that, especially for the kid in your charge who has a tendency to explode into a fifteen-meter dickless rage monster.  You are expected — no, required — to keep your composure at all times, to only vent the frustration in ways that Erwin dictates to serve his own purposes, and there is no justification for lapses in self-control.

You allow yourself to unleash a scream, but all that comes out is a quiet whine.

You find yourself standing in the middle of the room, hands fisted in your hair, and even though it's only been twelve hours, you can feel scalp grease and dander buildup contaminating your hands once more.  You've changed your socks at least three times today, but you still feel the sweat coating the lining of your boots, sticking your toes together and creating tacky spots on the backs of your knees, and you don't care if it's not actually there, don't care if you're imagining it and exaggerating it, you need to get away from the filth _now_.

You yank off your boots and pitch them into the door one by one, peel out of your leg straps, and fling the harness at the window.  You have a momentary blip of regret until it hits the wall harmlessly, and then you're pissed you haven't done more damage.

You rip off your jeans, pulling away your socks in the process, and stand on top of them barefoot.

You're about ready to take a shower, frigid groundwater be damned.

You know there's sweat accumulated under your arms, even though you appear dry.  Standing so close to the steaming titan arm had made you break out, and though you wouldn't let Eren leave your side, you could feel it getting rubbed into your skin with every contact your body had made with his.

The intrusion of his name into your mind presses your rage button with the flippancy of a child looking his mother dead in the eye as he eats the last biscuit without permission.

You whip your button-down shirt off and lob it toward your desk with a roar.

The Grimm Compendium still lies on your blotter, having been left there last night.  You hadn't meant to disrupt your filing system, but when you'd gone to put it back, you'd felt a tugging in your chest, as if removing it from sight and replacing it to its normal spot would undo the act of having shared it, and you'd placed it gently in the center of your desk.

You'd never meant to let him get this close.

You'd meant to file him away in your impeccably categorized mental directory, appoint him a slot of Know-Nothing Brat To Be Kept Under Control within the department of Things That Only Concern Me In Combat and stick him in it, casually excuse yourself from giving a shit whenever he unsurprisingly lived up to the title, and let the senior troops of your squad deal with him.

Yet he dug a hook into the cheek of your deeply-buried affection, and with no intention to offset the order you'd allotted, you've ended up placing him front and center on the blotter in the head office of Things That Are Precious To Me.

Slowly, as if walking on shards of glass, you move on trembling legs to your desk, and you stare down at the worn edges of the book.

You want to throw it through a window, eradicate the traces of endearment that distract you from the goal of _teach the little idiot how to safely shift and help him save humanity_ , but you can't even bring yourself to touch the volume.  You lean heavily on the head of the desk and stare at the gilded pages without blinking for so long that your vision blurs.

You thought the fire you'd recognized within him in the justice hall dungeons had intrigued you because it had reminded you so strongly of your younger years, stealing maneuver gear and throwing middle fingers to anyone who tried to smother your impetuosity, thriving on being held down by no man and no law.  In a way, it still does.  He's disturbingly evocative of you as a youth, but he's… for someone so damaged and angry, he's still so innocent.  He's seen terrible things, but he hasn't _done_ them, hasn't become so jaded as to attack without cause or provocation.  And further, because of the things he's witnessed, he has the capacity to understand why he can't become that way.

You can't control his emotions or his willpower, but you don't have to, because he knows true evil and won't let it happen to himself.

You're not attached to him for his violence.  You're attached to him because he's impressive, inspiring, and lovely, and you can't let him turn into you.

It touches your heart in a way that makes you want to cradle him close to your chest as if you can keep him from ever having to feel that way again.

And last night, before you'd known it, you were.

And he wants you.  God damn, sometimes you cannot fucking believe how _obvious_ it is that he wants you.  He's completely incapable of subtlety no matter what form his body takes, his fumbling quest to win your affection equally as plain as the path he'd smashed through Trost.  His flustered infatuation is doofy and ridiculous and fucking adorable, and just as no one can resist the sweetness of a baby animal pawing at them, your resolve to leave him in his slot and ignore him had deteriorated as quickly as the state of cleanliness does under your nails.  His unshakeable fondness for you is idiotic and unwarranted and really, really flattering.  No one that you can recall has _ever_ been interested in you for who you actually are — they would have been repulsed and astonished to learn of your illiteracy and your soft spot for fairy tales and a slew of other unexpected bullshit — but he is, and the more he learns, the more interested he becomes.  You have no idea what he could possibly see in you, but despite knowing better, you've done nothing to discourage him.  Although everything in you is screaming to leave him be and not get distracted, the quiet resolve in the back of your mind knows you already are.

A single voice within that place of calm acceptance informs you that you know exactly what you're going to do about it.

You attempt to tell yourself that the age gap and the experience gap repulse you, but you wouldn't have invited him to touch you this morning if you hadn't already made up your mind.  If he had pushed just a bit further, clutched you tighter and laid his mouth to your skin, you would have tugged him straight to your bed, and you know it.  But instead he'd gone straight for the prize, and it had startled you, and you'd scared him away, and you've been kicking the everloving shit out of yourself for it since.

You fucking disgust yourself.

You slam a fist onto the surface of your desk.

The sound masks the tap of knuckles on the door, and your breathing is heavy enough to conceal the sound of your name being mumbled through it.  Your fist pounds onto the desk again and again, making the book jump in place, and you screech and kick the desk so hard it budges an inch across the floor.  You feel something in your bare foot snap out of place, and the sudden fear jogs you slightly back into your right mind, providing you with a moment of calm to stare at your throbbing foot and hate yourself.

You hear the knock this time, and the feral growl in your voice when you snap "WHAT" unnerves you, but not enough to make you stop.

The door opens, and your head whips around to glare over your shoulder, ready to soundly murder whoever the fuck is stupid enough to barge in without permission at the exact climax of your fit of pique.

Your face and heart soften instantly into guilt when you see that it's Eren.

He quietly closes the door behind himself and holds his hands up toward you, as if you're a rampaging boar to keep at bay, and his murmurs are swift and gentle as he moves toward you… past you, and keeps moving.

"I'll be right there just give me a second I'm sorry I promise I'll be right back I'm just gonna wash up real quick hold it together just one more minute lemme clean up and I'll be out I'm sorry—"

His wide eyes are as bright and soothing as a cloudless sky filtering through leaves, and your soiled cravat is slung around his delicate throat like a scarf.

This is all you register before he slips into the bathroom, calling more apologies and reassurances over the hiss of the tap.

You step away from the desk, your balance scrambled and your head heavy.

He came for you.

He's allaying your neurosis before tending to your emotions.

He brought the cravat.

 _He came for you_.

Your mind is numb.  The amount of attention and dedication he's showing in these simple acts astounds you and leaves you as shocked as if he'd jumped in front of a cannon shell for you.  He's done it for other people, but not you.  No one does that for you.  No one needs to; no one should.

You had no idea he cared that much.

Standing there, staring at the bathroom door, you can sense all your frustration and self-disgust and rage slipping away, and you have no desire to bring them back.

You break.

Your feet carry you to the bathroom and your arms slide around his waist from behind, crushing his body against yours, burying your nose in the shoulder of his filthy jacket.

He panics, trying to turn and face you, demanding to know what's wrong, are you okay, what happened, sir talk to me, and you shush him.  The only thing you care about, the only thing on your mind, is the concern and tenderness he's showing for you right now.

"Keep washing."

**Author's Note:**

> **_[continue to chapter 8 ⇒](http://archiveofourown.org/works/983204/chapters/1997622) _ **


End file.
